Radio Hustle
Listen to the broadcast version of “American Hustle,” Alexandra Starr’s story, for the April 2015 issue of Harper’s Magazine, about how elite youth basketball exploits African athletes.
American Prospects
The full-length recording of WNYC’s Trafficked to Play, Then Forgotten, the broadcast version of Alexandra Starr’s April 2015 story for Harper’s Magazine, “American Hustle,” about how elite youth basketball exploits African athletes.
For the April 2015 issue of Harper’s Magazine, reporter Alexandra Starr investigates how young African athletes are exploited by America’s elite youth basketball system. In “American Hustle,” Starr follows the story of Chukwuemenka Ene, a seventeen-year-old Nigerian player who comes to the United States hoping to win a college athletic scholarship. But when Ene underperforms, he loses his place on the recruitment treadmill and winds up homeless. “Ene was to learn,” Starr writes, “that in the unsparing economy of youth basketball, he was little more than a commodity.”
The broadcast version of Starr’s article airs on WNYC today, March 16. Listen to the story on Harpers.org, using the player embedded at the top right of the page, or visit WNYC.org. Subscribe to Harper’s Magazine to read “American Hustle”—plus our entire 164-year archive.
